


Turnabout

by ThisShitMakesMeHard (Face_of_Poe)



Series: From Helmand to Harlan - Holidays with Tim and Raylan [6]
Category: Justified
Genre: All Raylan wants for his birthday is Tim, But it's all out of love I swear, M/M, Miami, Post-Series, Raylan's kind of an asshole, Tim's prickly, a bit on the angsty side
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-06 00:21:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5395598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Face_of_Poe/pseuds/ThisShitMakesMeHard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’d had a conversation - something physical and something fun and something wholly without expectations. A drunken impulse laden with questionable judgment turned convenient arrangement between two colleagues, two friends, who, for their own reasons, wanted something quiet and simple and easy for however long it lasted, and no hard feelings when it didn’t.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Except, the thing is... Tim and Raylan both really kinda suck at this game. <br/>Naturally, it would take a bullet to force either of them to actually admit that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turnabout

**Author's Note:**

> Set 6 months after Game Theory, 6 months before Lost & Found (but I think it stands alone alright). This is, for now at least, the last of this silly series.

“Raylan.” He blinked up from his computer and found his boss hovering at his desk, finger beckoning. “Come to my office, would you?”

Never a great sign from Dan, who tended to use his office for far more official business and far less bourbon than Art had back in Lexington. Raylan stood and trooped after him though, eyes lingering on the empty desk three down from his own, as they had every time he walked past it for the last six weeks. When he looked back to front, he realized Dan was watching him watch the empty desk, and he scowled inwardly.

Dan stood aside to let Raylan precede him into the office, and then pulled the door shut behind them. “Have a seat.”

He did, leaning back in the chair, chin resting on clasped hands. “Am I in trouble here?”

“Should you be?” Raylan rolled his eyes as Dan lowered himself into his own seat on the other side of the desk and leaned forward on his elbows. “I’ve tried to keep out of this; that doesn’t seem to be working, probably because you have the emotional maturity of an eight-year-old.”

“Wow, okay.”

Dan cut him off and effectively shut him up. “Gutterson’s coming back on Monday.” Raylan stilled, glanced down, chewing absently on the inside of his cheek. “Limited duty for a time, of course.”

“Yeah.”

His boss watched him a moment, like he was waiting for him to elaborate on his monosyllabic, lackluster response. When he had nothing more to offer, Dan sighed and rubbed his forehead tiredly. “Preferably before then, I need you to sort out whatever little lovers’ quarrel the two of you are having.”

Raylan pulled a face at Dan’s phrasing, but then stopped at the knowing look that just begged him to deny it. He straightened, frowned. “Shit.” 

“Look,” Dan spoke quietly, “I don’t care – a little confused on your end, I’ll grant you. I’d be pretty pissed if this was going on and he neglected to mention it when he was offered this office, but I don’t think that’s what happened, so… fine. It happens. You’ve kept it out of the office better than most – or you _did_ , until a month and a half ago.”

“Now, hold on,” Raylan jabbed a finger across the desk. “My qualm with Tim is strictly professional.”

“The _reason_ might be professional,” Dan countered bluntly. “Your handling of it has been anything but.”

Raylan closed his eyes, struggled to form his racing thoughts into coherent speech. “He acted irresponsibly, against orders -”

“I know that. _He_ knows that, and the bullet in his shoulder pretty well spoke for itself.” Raylan sucked in a deep breath. “The whole office knows that _you_ know that, after your little fit a few days ago. I think it goes without saying that your days working the field together are done,” Dan added, sardonic. “But Jesus, Raylan – have you even thanked him for saving your life?”

 

X---X

 

He didn’t call first, equal parts afraid he’d be talked out of going, he’d get mad and start berating the younger man, or that Tim would just ignore him and not answer at all. As he sat in his car outside the small duplex, however, he wished he had. And if it weren’t for the fact that it was pretty likely Tim had registered the appearance of his car on the curb before he’d even put it in park, he’d consider driving away and attempting this in the morning.

When he answered the door, Tim’s face gave nothing away. Maybe he’d noticed him pull up, maybe not; one thing showed pretty clearly in the halted tone of his voice as he told him to come inside, the stiff movements that could not be attributed to his shoulder only recently freed from its sling and still noticeably held with discomfort: he was not especially pleased to see Raylan.

His hair had been cropped shorter than usual sometime after leaving the hospital, but it was starting to grow back, messy in the absence of any effort to style it back. It made him look younger, more like the kid Raylan had first known in Kentucky, though the very uncharacteristic stubble of a man who couldn’t be bothered to shave regularly for what was probably the first time in his adult life countered that effect a bit.

“You’ve lost weight,” Raylan decided after passing a discerning gaze over his face, his form buried in an oversized Army sweatshirt. And then promptly hated himself for opening his visit by sounding like a fussy grandmother.

Like Tim didn’t give him enough shit as it was about being old.

“S’the alcohol. Lack thereof,” he amended. “My body’s still trying to cope with the sudden deprivation of like, a third of its daily caloric intake.” Was a time, back in Lexington, Raylan might’a taken that figure literally. “No,” Tim smiled humorlessly at his expression, moving around Raylan still hovering awkwardly in the kitchen entry to take up a stool at the counter opposite the sink. “It’s a combination of missing out on the stakeout diet of coffee and grease, and the fact that people keep bringing me like… vegetables and fruit and shit.”

“What people?”

“Dan and Linda… Kathy, Tina, Pedro…my landlady...”

_People who care_ , Raylan supplied, and then finally felt the full force of the shame and self-loathing that had urged him every night to go check up on Tim, while simultaneously convincing him not to. The inappropriately-channeled feelings that had led to him shouting at Tim in the locker room for all the office to hear when he’d come in three days ago, the first Raylan had seen him in nearly a month - since the morning he’d been discharged from the hospital - when he’d awkwardly, haltingly (offhanded nonchalance was never his strong suit) asked if the doctors were looking after Tim’s head as well as his shoulder.

_Jesus Christ, you go to pieces at one party and everyone becomes an armchair psychologist._

Tim’s response had been delivered in a tone that clearly relayed his deeper meaning of _fuck right off_ , and Raylan had done exactly that. It somewhat belatedly occurred that he’d spoken out of defensive vulnerability more than sincere vitriol.

Rather than attempt to sort out, explain any of these feelings and budding revelations, he offered, “When I got shot, I ate a lot of pizza and Chinese delivery, and then tried to hide the evidence before Winona got home from work.”

Maybe mentioning Winona wasn’t particularly inspired either, but Tim didn’t seem to care. “So if you didn’t bring kale and mangoes, like the magical healing powers of fresh produce can somehow negate the damage of a bullet, what can I do for you, Raylan?”

“Dan said you’re coming back on Monday.”

“Hm,” Tim offered noncommittally, shrugging his good shoulder. “Desk duty, with a side of physical therapy.”

“Said we can’t work in the field together anymore.” Regretted that line a bit too, since it only reminded him that Tim wouldn’t be working in the field at all for quite some time.

Tim stiffened, but didn’t look up to where Raylan leaned against the edge of the sink, watching him over the counter. “Damn,” he murmured down at his lap, “and I finally got you trained up where I like you.”

“Back to square one,” he commiserated softly, and then wished he hadn’t said that _either,_ because its meaning seemed suddenly multifold.

Especially when Tim sat up and finally met his eye, stare firm. “That all? You could’a just called. Texted. Skyped. Tweeted. Twitted? Twat?”

Raylan pinched the bridge of his nose, sucked in a calming breath. “I dropped the ball here, Tim. _I’m sorry_.” 

“Ain’t nothin’ to be sorry for,” Tim slid off the stool and came around the counter towards him. Raylan naively thought that _hm, maybe it was that easy_ , until Tim reached up for a cabinet and pulled out a glass, filling it with water from the tap. Spoke with cool disinterest, not looking at Raylan. “I performed inadequately; you expressed your displeasure. Apparently Dan has made sure it won’t happen again.”

So many brush-offs and understatements in Tim’s words begged to be argued. “Right,” Raylan mumbled instead, not trusting anything else that might come out of his mouth. “I’ll just… I’ll get outta your hair.”

Tim rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, like he was begging patience from a higher power he didn’t even believe in. Raylan turned away, and then whipped back around at the sound of the water glass shattering. Shards littered the sink, where Tim must have tossed it with considerable force, and he had the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes.

His voice was raw when he spoke. “Will you at least have the _fucking decency_ to admit to me that you’re pissed _because I was right_?” He pulled his hands away, and his eyes were a bit red. “You think no one was going to mention to me that you found Gonzalez?”

_Found_ wasn’t even the word, exactly. His CI had been tortured, murdered, and left as a message, clearly identified as a snitch.

“Your instincts were good,” Raylan admitted softly. “But you don’t take the shot when you been ordered not to. You don’t take the shot when there’s a good chance it’ll give your position away and get you killed.”

Tim himself had postulated the set-up as he eyed the ambush-friendly area, got uneasy at the exposure of his initial choice of location for surveying Raylan’s meet with a CI hours ahead of an important drop-off that was promised to deliver several highly-sought fugitives. Kathy, on point, had ordered him down from the rooftop, but the appearance of an unfamiliar vehicle bearing three unhappy gun thugs (an hour too early and none of them Gonzalez) stayed him. When it became clear, despite Raylan’s attempts to talk (and threaten) his way out, that they didn’t intend to leave the scene without him in tow, Tim put two down before the third registered a threat, absolute in his conviction that it was a trip Raylan was not meant to survive, that his CI had been burned and gave him up, and the outfit was out for vengeance. Raylan had capitalized on the distraction of the first two going down to dispatch the third, swearing viciously, until Charlie came running up insisting, _There were four shots. Who took the fourth shot?_

Kathy over the radio: _Goddammit, Tim, report._

Silence.

Raylan hadn’t been so positive of his narrowly-avoided fate until Gonzalez’s body turned up two weeks later, shortly after Tim left the hospital. The uncertainty that Tim might have wrecked a salvageable situation, visions of AUSA investigations dragging down his career, weighed on Raylan throughout the intervening time.

But Tim was cut from a slightly different cloth, had come into his own in a goddamn warzone, had spent a career watching through the scope of his rifle, plagued by the knowledge that he might be the only one could make the difference. Though it wasn’t lost on Raylan that there was a time Tim would have followed Kathy’s order to stand down because _it was an order_ , and maybe he _was_ a bad influence on the younger marshal.

His mind wandered back to Rachel’s frustration as interim chief, when she learned just how difficult he’d been making Art’s job since joining the office, and he couldn’t help but imagine neither of them would have any reservations about calling out his hypocrisy in criticizing Tim’s rogue moment.

Dan must’ve really been feeling sorry for him.

His musings were interrupted when Tim sighed in defeat, turned away, ignoring the glass in the sink for the time being. “What’s the fucking point of having backup?”

“C’mon, Tim,” Raylan trailed him into the living space, watched him sink tiredly down into a chair and maneuver a pillow to cushion his left side. “The situation changes, you reassess. Charlie and Kathy were still in play - you coordinate, not force everyone else to play catch-up.”

“If they’d gotten you in that car, you’d be dead.”

“’Stead of you?”

Tim’s brow furrowed, tongue darted out to wet chapped lips. “I’m right here,” he said, tone half reassuring, half bemused.

Raylan knelt beside the chair, touched a hand to the spot just below his left collarbone close to his armpit where the bullet had struck him, pushing through under the edge of his vest. Raylan kept his touch light, even through the thick shirt, pressed harder as he trailed a hand down towards his heart, then skimmed it up to the pulse point on his neck. “A near thing.” Bare inches from his aorta, from his carotid artery. A graze of his subclavian the doctors had called nothing short of miraculous.

The shot had mostly been lucky, a bad angle over a decent distance; a better weapon could have put a round straight through the soft armor vest into his heart. A better marksman would have put one in his head.

Tim closed his eyes, leaned slightly into the hand at his neck. “I ain’t gonna say I’m sorry. How do I look you in the eye – or any of ‘em at work – if I regret takin’ the shot?”

“Ya ain’t God, Tim.”

“How do I look your daughter in the eye, next time she comes by the office? What was I s’posed to say to her, if you died… because I didn’t take the shot?”

Raylan withdrew abruptly, sat back on his heels. “That ain’t fair.”

“Why?”

“What was anyone supposed to say to _me_ if you died because you _did_?” He wiped angrily at the moisture collecting in the corners of his eyes. “Goddamn, Tim. I ain’t pissed because you were _right_ ; I’m pissed because you treat your life like it somehow means something _less_ than anyone else’s.”

When Tim looked away quickly, schooled his expression back to neutral, Raylan realized, like a punch to the gut, that Tim didn’t just treat it that way; he believed it. Or maybe just thought he’d cheated death long enough by now and couldn’t understand why his own number hadn’t come up, some residual survivor’s guilt after sending too many friends home in body bags from faraway places.

Anger flared again in the pit of his stomach, was tempered slightly by the lump in his throat, and he put a hand to either side of Tim’s face and leaned up. Tim turned away at the last second, and Raylan’s lips landed on his stubble-covered jaw instead. “I can’t do this, anymore.”

That punch to the gut sharpened into the cold burn of a knife. “I fucked up,” Raylan mumbled against him, forehead to Tim’s temple. “Seein’ you… washin’ your blood out from under my nails for _days_ … I got scared. I fucked up.”

“You didn’t fuck up,” Tim sighed, his tone forcedly even. “I just…” He lifted his right hand from the armrest, searching for words, dropped it again. “It’s just too much.” Raylan withdrew his hands, pulled back to look at him, and Tim added in an almost inaudible murmur, “And it’s not enough.”

“I haven’t even the _slightest_ clue what that means,” Raylan confessed, succeeding in drawing a pained laugh.

Except his expression was equally pained as he tried to explain. “We had a conversation, you and me. What this was, what expectations – or lack thereof.” His words were without malice, but another hot wave of shame burned Raylan’s face. “And that just… it was good, you know? It was fun. But it ain’t workin’ for me anymore.”

“So let’s have a different conversation.”

“No.” Not even a token smile for the reference. “Not right now. Not like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like you starin’ at me like I’m gonna up and disappear!” Tim exclaimed, shifting uncomfortably and reaching for a bottle of painkillers on the end table. “Like you can’t quite believe I’m alive. Feel like I could ask you for just about anything right now and you’d say yes, out of relief or guilt or both.”

He was probably right about that – Raylan could admit his own weaknesses. But that didn’t mean Tim was after something he wouldn’t otherwise give, gladly. “At least tell me what you meant,” Raylan pressed. “It’s _too much_ but _not enough_? Give me something to work with here.”

“A clean break is too much to ask for? Wasn’t that like, the whole _point_ of that conversation?”

Raylan thought back to that muggy July evening, the scream of sirens slicing through the Miami air, paramedics bodily shoving past, leaving him behind as they loaded up their charge and tore off towards the hospital. Dan giving up on Raylan’s help in dealing with the rest of the scene while they waited on more locals, the coroner, then telling Charlie to get him out of there.

_Home_? he had asked, eyeing Raylan’s bloody hands and shirt, his shocked stare. _Office?_

A searching look at his face that Raylan now knew had uncovered far more than he’d realized in the moment, and Dan corrected, _Hospital._

“Where do you come by the notion that any of this is clean?” he asked helplessly.

After a moment’s consideration, Tim huffed a soft laugh and scooted forward, eyeing Raylan expectantly until he climbed to his feet and backed away to give Tim room to stand. He went back in the kitchen, and Raylan could hear him pulling out a new glass and running the tap, the rattle of the pill bottle. He stood in the doorway and watched Tim take a gulp of water, throw his head back, and swallow.

Then he began picking glass out of the sink. Raylan grabbed the trashcan from its home by the door and dropped it at Tim’s side.

“I’ve been an asshole,” he decided to try one more time. Tim continued clearing the sink of debris. “I was scared until I knew you’d be okay, and then I got mad that you almost died, and the longer I didn’t come check in, or just call, the more ashamed I felt and that made me even madder.”

“I didn’t expect you to,” Tim frowned, speaking down at the counter. “Wasn’t really in top form.”

And that was the crux of it, he realized. They’d had a conversation – some four, five months before the shooting. Something physical and something fun and something wholly without expectations. A drunken impulse laden with questionable judgment turned convenient arrangement between two colleagues, two friends, who, for their own reasons, wanted something quiet and simple and easy for however long it lasted, and no hard feelings when it didn’t.

Except it just sort of kept going. In his head, weekends became divided up by _weekends with Willa_ or _weekends with Tim_ , and somewhere along the way, it stopped being solely for the booze and the sex. Sometimes there was neither. The lines Tim had so firmly drawn in the affair became largely blurred, and some disappeared altogether.

But they’d never had a new conversation. Tim hadn’t expected his presence these past few weeks; but Raylan was pretty confident in guessing that he’d _wanted_ it, much as he’d probably tried to convince himself otherwise. He wasn’t the sort to let himself be _taken care of,_ per se, but craving, in the absence of physical intimacy, the sort of emotional connection, companionship, they’d told themselves wasn’t a part of it, wasn’t what they _did_.

Tim was too proud, too set in his solitary ways, to admit he wanted more, and Raylan had long been too afraid of alienating him to point out that he already had it, at a word.

Feeling about an inch tall at the thought of Tim, bored and hurting, puttering around the place feeling antsy and useless when he wasn’t fielding tedious but well-meaning fruit and vegetable drop-offs and obligatory check-ins, Raylan said in a small voice, “You know there’s no one else, right? Hasn’t been, this whole time?”

“Wasn’t that kind of the idea?” a shade of bitterness finally crept into Tim’s dull tone. “Something to get through the hard-up times?”

He wondered if Tim had thought so cynically on the routine they’d accidentally built for themselves before any of this epic fiasco. 

“Give me a chance to fix this,” he urged. “This weekend. New conversation.” Tim looked away, hesitated. “Another chance; think of it as a birthday present.”

That finally drew Tim’s full attention. “What?” he laughed incredulously.

“Sunday’s my birthday, you’re out of your brace... Let’s do something.”

“You’re shameless and manipulative.”

“…Is that a yes?”

Tim searched his face, expression shifting from a drawn sort of weariness to something almost puzzled by whatever he found there. “Yeah, okay,” he mused. “If we’re already fucked for work, may as well drive the final nail in the coffin.”

Because Tim was a bettin’ man, and Raylan was smart enough to realize that even _he_ wouldn’t lay odds on this ending well. Maybe six weeks ago, he would have. “Dan’s a bit peeved, but he ain’t pissed.”

“You tell him?”

Shrugging, Raylan shook his head and sat on the stool, suddenly exhausted beyond belief. “Think he suspected it when you were in the hospital and I accepted his time off mandate without bitching; pretty sure he _knew_ when you dropped by on Tuesday.” When Raylan had berated Tim with all the subtlety of a terrified mother shouting at her reckless kid _don’t you scare me like that again._

Jesus, was he in over it. He wasn’t entirely sure when or how that had happened, made a mental note to recount the past six months, but then realized in an uncharacteristic fit of self-awareness that he’d have to go back much further in damn near the past _decade_ to trace all the threads that had brought him here to this moment.

Which seemed like a lot of work to understand something that might not survive the weekend.

But he did ask, “Can I stay?” before he could start second-guessing whether it was a good idea.

With an expression that was a bit too close to resigned for comfort, Tim said, “Sure.” Considered a minute. “You’re in charge of dinner, though. God help you if I find a vegetable anywhere near my food.”

“Deal.”

He hesitated a moment more, then added, “I sleep better on the couch, can prop up a bit, so… bed’s all yours.”

“Okay.”

“Dan’s bringing paperwork over in the morning.” He frowned, contemplative. “Lot of paperwork when you get shot. Might be a greater disincentive than the actual pain of getting shot.”

“Either way… stop doing that.”

The rest of the evening passed without further argument or any conversation that seemed too serious, but a certain tension just couldn’t quite be shaken as they ate carryout, watched some TV, covered some innocuous gossip from work, obligatory updates on Willa who had just finished her second week of the first grade.

Yet despite the terseness and the sort of limbo in which they were hovering, Tim let Raylan draw him to the bed once he’d done his nightly stretching ritual, still re-familiarizing himself with repaired and dormant muscles. Tim was not a _cuddler_ by any stretch of the imagination, craved physical contact in short, fervent bursts, and was usually on to the next task while Raylan was still catching his breath.

Tonight though, he let himself be maneuvered so he was lying on his right side, left supported by Raylan, who had one arm draped loosely about his hip and the other hand absently threaded into his hair. “Okay?” Tim hummed an affirmative. “Holler when you want to move.”

“Hm,” Tim mumbled tiredly. “I take the good shit before bed, you might be trapped there for the duration.”

“I’ll deal.” Tim nodded as if to agree it was the least he could do, and Raylan leaned forward and put his lips close to his ear. “Thank you.” Tim tilted his head slightly towards him, questioning. “For taking the shot.” He nodded once, stilted, but then shifted and burrowed in a bit more. Raylan watched him after his eyes drifted closed and his breathing grew slower, steadier, but not quite fully asleep when he murmured, “Thought I lost you. In a very permanent sense. Don’t want to lose this, either.”

“Thought we weren’t doin’ this ‘til Sunday.” Tim’s words were slurred by drugs and sleep.

“Yeah, okay.” He settled in behind Tim, pressed a light kiss to the back of his neck that made him shiver.

“Say,” Tim murmured, clinging to consciousness, “Your birthday, huh? How ancient are you these days, anyway?”

Raylan supposed he really should have seen that one coming.

**Author's Note:**

> Really snuck the 'holiday' theme in there at the end. ;-) 
> 
> Thanks for reading, this and any of the rest of the series! I've greatly enjoyed all the comments and appreciate all the kudos! Until next time!


End file.
